Gloss is a set of enhancements to the Unix command line experience. It consists of shell configurations and small utilities. It is primarily developed on macOS but is also actively used with Amazon Linux 2022.

Download and install the following:

• Latest Python 3 (For Mac, download from https://python.org or install via Homebrew)
• Optional: Visual Studio Code (https://code.visualstudio.com)

• Run the Python installers.
• If you would like to use VSCode, download it and drag the application to your system Applications folder.
• Install the code command line shortcut for VSCode:
  • Open VSCode
  • From the View menu select Command Palette...
  • In the command field, type "Shell command: Install 'code' command in PATH command" (it should autocomplete after a few characters)
  • Hit return to run the command; this will create a symlink from /usr/local/bin/code to the program inside the application bundle.
  • You can now use the code command in the console to open files and folders.
• Run sudo make install-sys or sudo install/gloss-install-sys.py
• Run make install-user or install/gloss-install-user.py
• Run make install-vscode or install/gloss-install-vscode.sh
• Adjust your .bash_profile, .bashrc, .zprofile, .zshenv, .zshrc as necessary.
• TODO: explain those adjustments in more detail.

• Press F5 to launch a new instance of the editor with the extension loaded.
• If it does not work the first time then you may need to go to the debug mode (click the bug icon in the left toolbar of VSCode), and launch it with the GUI controls at the top of the pane.
• In the debug instance, select File > Preferences > Color Themes and pick gloss-black.
• Changes can be reloaded with Cmd+R from the debug instance.

Apple's /usr/libexec/path_helper enforces a basic PATH ordering. It first adds every line listed in /etc/paths, followed by every line listed in each file in /etc/paths.d/*. path_helper is called in /etc/zprofile, which is sourced after ~/.zshenv. Note that files in /etc/paths.d should begin with a two digit ordering number; three digits fails as of macOS 12.6.

Gloss currently does not alter PATH apart from adding its own $GLOSS_DIR/bin in env.zsh.